


Honor and Glory

by SilverDagger



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Gen, Mostly a lot of bitterness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2016-05-02
Packaged: 2018-06-05 21:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6724183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A soldier's dream, and the seeds of a failed rebellion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honor and Glory

They call themselves the Dead Men when the nobility are listening. 

“It's a brave name,” Wiegraf says to the highborn generals who sit in the commander's tent over a bottle of magically chilled wine, deigning to listen to his tales of blood and glory. “It's a name that spits in the face of fear.” Miluda stands off to the side, more restrained than her brother but no less a soldier, and no less a knight than any lordling's daughter. She nods and concurs at appropriate intervals, professes loyalty and speaks of the demands of honor, and between the both of them, before their superiors retire, they've managed to secure the supplies their unit is needing.

Within the ranks, they're the Corpse Brigade – the expendables, a bitter joke for those who know the bitter truth. Wiegraf doesn't start the name, and neither does Miluda, but when they pick it up – commander and lieutenant finding soldiers' black humor cause for amusement instead of sedition – something changes in the way the troops look at them. Conversations don't stop when they grow close enough to hear, and soldiers shift aside when they join the others around the cooking pot at night – not out of respect, but to make room.

They've proven something, Wiegraf says. Their loyalty, perhaps. Their blood, Miluda thinks, that same baseborn red that soaks the fields along the Ordallian border. They might have risen through the ranks, but they're not set above man or woman who fights beside them; they know that loyalty and blood mean the same thing, and they haven't forgotten why a soldier might sign on to carry a pike in the name of liege and country

You can't eat promises, but you can live on them for a surprisingly long time, let them sustain you after dry bread and salted meat have long since run out. They'll keep you on your feet longer than glory, certainly. Wiegraf counts up imaginary coins, holds them like talismans through every bloody rout and failed siege, and he doesn't have to speak his hopes aloud for her to know she shares them. A soldier's pay tallied up over years of bloodshed, the mud and shit of the battlefield and all the nameless graves. A soldier's honor. The chance at something more. And when the wars are over, as even these wars must one day be – a bit of land, somewhere quiet with apple trees and fields of golden barley, to work and to own. A place for children, perhaps. For family.

They know enough to call themselves the Corpse Brigade and laugh about it. They should have known better.

*

The wars end, as all wars do. It happens without fanfare, at least on Miluda's side of the conflict: a meeting between lords, a stroke of the pen, and just like that, it's over.

A glorious victory, some fools still crow, and the official word is a glorious standoff, but the truth of the matter, the thing that dead men and peasants know, is that what they've been handed is nothing more than a glorious defeat. The wars are over, and the kingdom bankrupt, and with no more need of them, the soldiers are turned out into the streets to make their own way back to whatever home remains to them.

Wiegraf takes it worse than she does in the end, but of course, he always believed easier, and more deeply. She had gambled, but he had dreamed, and there's nothing she can do that will give those dreams back to him.

“They lied,” he says. Just that, quieter than she's ever heard him speak. She takes the discharge papers from his unresisting hands and says “I know.”

And with that, there's nothing they can do but turn back to the village they left behind them.

They pass through untended fields on the road home, farmhouses looted and crops left to rot, belongings to heavy to carry left abandoned by the side of the road. There are refugees on the road, driving carts and wagons loaded up with all they can carry or making camp around low, smoky fires. Not all are hostile, but few have any trust or use for yet more soldiers, or any food to spare for strangers. With neither law nor harvest, it won't be long before some of those hollow-eyed men and women resort to banditry; Miluda intends to be long gone by the time they do.

Home too is a promise, but when they come to the land that their own family once worked, there's nothing left. Even the manor house is burnt down to its blackened foundations, and of the village, no sign remains but char and trampled earth. 

So they walk on. The roads don't change, though the weather grows colder, and when they find a town that hasn't burned, safe behind thick walls, it's a tavern they seek first. There's enough gil in the pittance they'd been thrown to drink themselves into oblivion, and with the image of her homeland's remains burned behind her eyes, Miluda can't deny that oblivion looks like a more attractive prospect by the minute.

Wiegraf matches her drink for drink, staring into his ale like he might read the future there, and if she recognizes violence building beneath the bleakness in his eyes, it's only because she knows it in herself.

“The Dead Men,” he says, with quiet bitterness. “We might as well be, but we never were.” He drains the last of the tankard, slams it down hard on the table, and pushes himself unsteady to his feet. “We're the fucking Corpse Brigade.”

Miluda isn't surprised when all the eyes in the tavern turn in their direction, or when a hush falls over the room and few patrons slip out the door, well aware of trouble on the way. But she isn't expecting a man to stand, still steady, and approach them without aim to harm. She recognizes him as a former lieutenant, and when he reaches their place at the bar, he bows, hand to heart, with true respect.

“You too, Commander?” he says.

“Me too,” Wiegraf says, swaying where he stands, but though she knows he's thinking it, it's Miluda who says, “They betrayed us all.”

“So they did,” the lieutenant says. Scars shift around the corners of his eyes when he laughs, sounding more tired than truly mocking, and Miluda's aimless anger snaps into sudden resolve. You can't eat promises, but promises aren't the only thing the army gave them, and bitterness isn't the only thing they've learned. 

_Loyalty and blood,_ she thinks. No difference between them, and nothing else in the end that matters.

“The question is,” she says, “what do we mean to do about it now?”


End file.
